After the college entrance examination, Li Wenli, a candidate from Zhejiang Province, did not feel relieved - "I am struggling with choosing a school and a major." On the third day after the exam, she began to browse the relevant information on the Internet, and soon, she found a new change - more than 10 vocational undergraduate colleges in the mainland have been added this year. This is good news for me, who is a little worse in my studies but has strong hands-on skills! In the past few days, she has focused her volunteer choice on vocational undergraduate schools.
The reporter learned that the Ministry of Education has recently issued two announcements, intending to agree to set up 16 new vocational undergraduate colleges, and the current number of vocational undergraduate colleges in the mainland has reached 51.
"In recent years, as a new thing in the mainland's education reform, vocational undergraduate education has undergone a development process from scratch, from pilot to comprehensive promotion, and has played a great role in reversing people's inherent prejudice against 'vocational education'." Zong Cheng, an associate researcher at the Institute of Vocational and Continuing Education of the Chinese Academy of Education Sciences, said.
What does it mean to expand the capacity of vocational undergraduates? What are the challenges and opportunities behind it?
It provides more possibilities for students to further their studies or find employment
"The continuous increase in vocational undergraduate colleges shows that the status of vocational education has been significantly improved. It is foreseeable that in the next two years, the enrollment scale of vocational undergraduates will increase from nearly 100,000 to about 600,000. As a witness of the "promotion" of higher vocational education, Professor Gao Yongxiang, director of the Teaching Supervision Department of Zhejiang University of Mechanical and Electrical Vocational and Technical University, said happily that this shows that the state encourages the development of multi-level and multi-form vocational education, so that the strategic planning of vocational education "different types and equal importance" is truly implemented in the education selection path and academic improvement channel, providing solid support for the training of a large number of high-level technical and skilled talents.
"At present, vocational bachelor's degree has been included in the existing bachelor's degree awarding system, which provides more possibilities for a large number of ordinary students to further their studies or choose employment. Especially for those students whose college entrance examination scores hover on the edge of the general undergraduate admission line, or who have special skills in a certain field, vocational undergraduate schools have the advantages of closely combining market demand, focusing on the two-way development of theory and practice, and high employment rate, which provides new perspectives and ideas for voluntary application and major selection. Zong Cheng said.
Gao Yongxiang also said: "Vocational undergraduate education focuses on the cultivation of practical skills, and enables students to have stronger employment competitiveness and innovation and entrepreneurship ability through the integrated teaching of theory and practice, the cultivation of compound ability and the training of complex operation skills. The continuous increase in vocational undergraduate colleges will further promote college students to achieve high-quality employment and entrepreneurship, thereby alleviating the pressure of social employment. ”
Zong Cheng said that by increasing the supply of high-level technical and skilled talents and improving the training level, it will effectively alleviate the problem of "the ability and level of technical and skilled talents cultivated by higher vocational colleges are 'insufficient', and the academic talents cultivated by ordinary undergraduate colleges are 'useless'", which provides a new choice for solving the problem that it is difficult to match the educational structure and the industrial talent demand structure for a long time.
According to Tang Zhibin, a professor at the Institute of Vocational Education of Hunan Normal University, vocational undergraduates may become the "catfish" of the reform and development of higher education in the mainland, forcing other relevant colleges and universities to actively transform and open up to the market, so as to form a more scientific and reasonable education pattern.
Improving the system of standards is the key
How can a vocational bachelor's degree achieve healthy and sustainable development? What are the possible solutions to a range of challenges?
In Zong Cheng's view, improving the system of standards is the key to solving the problem. She suggested that the guiding opinions on promoting the high-quality development of vocational undergraduate education should be developed as soon as possible, the development path of vocational undergraduate schools should be clarified, and vocational undergraduate schools from different sources and forms should be guided to highlight the characteristics of running schools and improve the quality of running schools. In addition to the guiding opinions, it is also necessary to complete the formulation of the standards for top-post internships, the construction standards for training and teaching conditions, evaluation standards, and quality assurance standards as soon as possible.
Zongcheng believes that further improving the social service capacity of vocational undergraduate schools is also the key to future development. "Specifically, vocational undergraduate schools need to actively participate in the construction of the industry-education integration community and the city-level industry-education consortium, give full play to the advantages of running schools, and drive the linkage development of similar vocational schools in the industry and the region. Actively carry out cooperative training with ordinary colleges and universities, middle and higher vocational schools, and expand the channels for vocational undergraduate education graduates to grow and become talents. Actively participate in high-level technology research and development projects, vigorously carry out enterprise-oriented technical research, and strengthen innovation capabilities and achievement transformation and application level. ”
"The development of vocational undergraduates should improve the accuracy of the connection between majors and market demand." Gao Yongxiang suggested that the deep integration of vocational undergraduate education and industrial development should be strengthened, pay close attention to the development trend of the industry, and optimize the professional setting and talent training program according to the new changes in industrial transformation and upgrading and the new needs of high-level technical and skilled talents, so as to ensure the close connection between the major and the industrial chain.
In addition, Tang Zhibin also suggested that the theoretical research and practical exploration of vocational undergraduate education should be further deepened, and in-depth research should be conducted on the training objectives, professional construction models, curriculum standards and frameworks, talent training models and paths, evaluation methods and means, etc., so as to reach a basic consensus on vocational undergraduate education in the theoretical and practical circles.
"At the same time, we will promote the school to run a school-oriented, society-oriented and future-oriented school, strengthen the construction of a team of teachers who meet the needs of vocational undergraduates, forge a team of 'industry professors' and 'enterprise mentors' composed of industry masters, skilled craftsmen and high-skilled talents, and continuously optimize the structure of the teaching team." Tang Zhibin reminded that "while concentrating some high-quality resources and investment to build benchmark high-level vocational colleges and lead the reform and development of vocational education in the mainland, we should pay more attention to 'running every vocational college' and form a school-running pattern of 'each in its own place, each in its own beauty, and the United States in common', so as to consolidate the foundation of modern vocational education in the mainland." ”
Get rid of the habitual mindset of being a "research university".
For vocational schools, the development of vocational bachelor's degree is both an opportunity and a challenge.
"At present, the top-level system of vocational undergraduates is not perfect, and the effectiveness of docking with national strategies and guiding the development of school connotation needs to be improved urgently." Zong Cheng pointed out that the development process of vocational undergraduate education is relatively short, although the system of school setting standards and professional setting management measures has been promulgated, the indicators of the characteristics of vocational education types still need to be highlighted, the professional teaching standards, curriculum standards, top post internship standards and other systems still need to be improved, the financial investment mechanism to support the development of vocational undergraduate education is not perfect, and the high-quality development of vocational undergraduate education is still facing a series of basic problems.
"In addition, vocational undergraduates are still in a period of scale expansion, the number of high-quality schools is small, their own capacity is limited, and various national platforms and key projects have not yet been opened to vocational undergraduates, resulting in the role of vocational undergraduate education in leading the construction and reform of the vocational education system is not obvious." According to Zong Cheng's analysis, some schools have problems such as weak ability to connect with national strategies, unclear positioning of talent training, and insufficient basic school-running conditions. In addition, there are huge differences between schools in terms of school foundation, school philosophy, development orientation, etc., and some schools are affected by the concept of general undergraduate education, and there are misunderstandings such as deviating from the "track" of vocational education.
This is also a question that Tang Zhibin attaches great importance to. "For the development of professional undergraduates, we first need to get rid of the inertial thinking of pursuing to become a 'research university', adhere to our own 'professionalism', and constantly optimize the type positioning, so as to avoid the 'fading' of professionalism caused by 'academic drift' and the lack of academic 'quality'." He added that at present, there is also a tendency to pay attention to the fact that almost all vocational colleges are seeking to upgrade their costs. In fact, not every higher vocational college should be a vocational bachelor's degree, and most of them should still adhere to the basic positioning of training at the junior college level, and make the mainland's higher vocational education a type of education with distinctive characteristics, strong service capabilities, high industrial and economic contributions, and extensive social influence. "This is the proper meaning of the development of higher vocational education."
Gao Yongxiang frankly said that in the context of the expansion of vocational undergraduates, how to ensure the completion rate of the school's enrollment plan, the enrollment rate of new students and the employment quality of graduates is a challenge that will be faced. "This may also trigger a series of chain reactions - once the professional setting and construction of schools lag behind the needs of social and industry development, it will lead to problems such as disconnection between talent training and market demand, mismatch between jobs and majors, and low quality of employment." (Reporter Jin Haotian)
Source: Guangming Daily
![What should I do if my blood lipids are high? Doctor's advice: Find out what type of hyperlipidemia you have first[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)